Every rule has its exception. In the past few days I have worked closely with few members of what a lot of experts have labeled the most “entitled” generation ever in the history of mankind. However, my experience has been nothing but positive. I’ve been working side by side with creative, hard working and competent young professionals.  Before you decide to fit everyone 20 year old in a high-maintenance and low-return box, consider this. Every person deserves to prove his or her own merit. It’s easy to label someone but hard to change one’s preconceived notions. Give them the benefit of the doubt, expect the best. Simply, treat them like you want to be treated. Give them guidance but let them perform. When you have young talented people working for you, let them be young. Point them in the direction you want them to go, but try not to micromanage.…

Churches stop growing or they plateau for several reasons, too many for one blog post. So I’m tackling them in a series of posts featuring growth barriers for churches I have encountered during years of strategic consulting. I’m calling these posts “Churches Won’t Grow When.”  While some of the issues that keep churches from growing can be classified as communication barriers, in my experience, the most debilitating ones are leadership and systematic mistakes that will derail growth or even kill a congregation. Interestingly, these apply to business and ministries as well. Your church will stop growing when its leader put his or her interests before what’s best for the congregation. I call it the superstar syndrome. I have seen this one play out time and time again. These are gifted communicators who are able to draw large crowds but can never get past making personal sacrifices for the sake of…

Leadership drives everything we do. Great leaders take us into the future with their ability to see what’s not yet reality and inspire and motivate us to get there.  As a consultant who has worked with hundreds of  business and church leaders, I have noticed that often great leaders have to retool their own leadership or management style in order to continue to grow their organization. This leadership retooling is both painful and necessary. These are leadership styles that if you don’t grow beyond them will stop your organization from getting to the next level: The Funnel. Everything needs to come through your desk. Nothing gets approved, financed or blessed unless you are involved. That’s a sure way to keep a good thing from growing. This usually happens because the leader doesn’t trust his or her team and feels that he’s the best person for the job– every job, that…

I don’t know what it is about the human spirit that often finds itself restless with the status quo. I’m not talking about ingratitude, that elusive never-pleasing, never-ending quest for affirmation, money, power, control or prestige. That, I’m certain, is a condition of the human heart searching for fulfillment outside the Creator. I’m talking about reaching a point in your career, business or even in your relationship with your family that by most standards would be considered successful; however, deep inside you know you could do better. You’ve settled for good when you know you could be great. I’ve been through this cycle so many times in my professional life: I reach a new comfortable plateau and decide that there’s nothing wrong with setting up residence there. After all, my reasoning goes, this is a much better plateau than the one before and some would love to have it. But…

Yesterday I spent the morning interviewing college kids for a video project my company is working on in partnership with Living a Better Story Foundation, Belmont University and Donald Miller, the author. It was a culmination of a 21-day program where Belmont’s Sophomore class attended Don’s lecture a few weeks back. At the end of the lecture, students received an envelope with either 5, 10 or 20 dollars. They were asked not to spend the money on themselves but to pray first and then seek to help someone else with the money by the end of 21 days. I honestly didn’t know what we were going to hear, but I certainly didn’t expect what I got. Interview after interview I heard stories of how prayer led to the realization that this “given” money was God’s. “But so is everything else I have,” said these students, “including what I thought was…

There I sat hearing the same lame excuses I’ve heard for the past 12 months from the staff of a very large not for profit: “we can’t do it because IT told us it would take 5 years before we can have online registration and payments.”  Are you kidding me!? It’s been over 8 hours since our meeting and I’m still outraged at the ridiculous notion that a multi-million dollar organization cannot, let me rephrase, will not figure out how to make something as common as an online sign up forms work system wide. Sadly, in this case,  IT is killing the organization. I sound like a broken record on this issue, but marketing should drive your web strategy and not IT. Really.  Your online presence lives or dies on the end-user experience. If people can find what they’re looking for, if they can intuitive navigate the site and complete…

My friend didn’t know why his social media strategy was not as successful as that of one of his peers who, in his words, “is just killing it!” I didn’t have to think at all to answer that question. The answer was simple and obvious: it’s because he’s engaged and you’re not. If you have a public presence online whether you are an author, speaker, actor, politician, reporter, pastor, CEO or housewife, I’m convinced that’s virtually impossible to have an impact-full social media presence if you delegate your message solely to an assistant or to a marketing company. In full disclosure, my company, The A Group, often designs, implements and manages social media campaigns, but we’re very careful not to do what only our clients can do: be themselves. And when they abdicate that privilege, results are never what they could be. If all your posts are about your product,…

There’s nothing worst than being stuck. That’s a place where you’ve tried everything you know, every trick in the book and nothing has worked. And now you find yourself not able to move forward, upward, sideways or even backwards. The odds are you’re stuck right now trying to figure out what to do next. Some part, or facet of your life is paralyzed, literally stuck. You can’t make a move because, from where you are, there are no moves to make. And now what? Maybe it’s your career. After all the years of school, work or both, you should be further ahead, but you’re not. You’re stuck. Maybe you’re caught in a relational nightmare. You’re tried everything you know to move out of this bad place but nothing has worked. What once promised so much happiness is now a source of pain and regret. You’re stuck. Finances are always getting…

“You know we can’t be the Purple Cow forever, ” said the voice on the phone. That was 4 days ago, and I can’t get the conversation out of my mind. In case you haven’t read it, “Purple Cow” is a book by celebrity marketer Seth Godin that says: “You’re either a purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible.” I like to think of myself as a purple cow. Well, if I don’t pick up my running mileage I’ll be a different kind of cow, but none one us wants to believe that we’re no longer remarkable or that we now work for a boring, invisible or irrelevant organization. Mr. Godin and others have written a lot about becoming a purple cow, but once we get our colorful cow status, how do we stay there? Very few have been able to sustain purple cow status for a…

Somedays I walk into a new week with purpose, a long “to do” list and begin to knock it out. But then there are days like today. I’m sluggish, a bit unfocused, didn’t plan the week well, and I’m not sure what to tackle first. In these unplanned moments, my reaction is to find the busy work that will inevitably appear out of nowhere and fill my entire day and do that. But instead, I decided to stop and ask the one question I should ask myself most days: What should I do for my business that only I can do? I’ve been asking that questions for years now and because of it, I have stopped doing a lot of things, such as fixing copiers, designing brochures, writing checks, troubleshooting IT problems and a number of other important things that other people can do, often much better than me, and…